Teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteous web design.

e-Sword

Last week’s dive into Biblical web services inspired some of you to remind me of an open source freeware Scripture application known as E-Sword. Here is a portion of the write-up from the web page:

e-Sword is a fast and effective way to study the Bible. e-Sword is feature rich and user friendly with more capabilities than you would expect in a free software package. The fact that e-Sword is free is just one of the blessings and does not speak of the quality of the software. I make my living writing software and I believe I have put forth my best effort in this endeavor. The real work, however, was put in by the godly men and women who devoted countless years creating the texts that have been made available for our benefit.

This morning I was once again reminded of the extensibility of this cool tool by blogs4God friend Gary Petersen, who blogs about E-Sword at Country Keepers who writes:

I’ve been looking for an electronic Bible. One of the must-have requirements was that it needed to include a New American Standard Bible. That seems to narrow the list a bit, but I’ve found a real winner of a program …

… and ends his review with …

I’ve already purchased the NASB text, which was $20 to the Lockman Foundation, who holds the copyright to NASB text, and I’m going to be sending a donation Rick’s way. e-Sword is well worth the time to download.

Perhaps what I need to do is open a dialog with Rick Meyers, the author of this wonderful freeware and see what we can do about extending this to a web-based application — which of course will include some wonderful web services and APIs.

BTW, check out the E-Sword site, if for nothing else the cool map below the slogan “Eliminating Biblical illiteracy . . . one download at a time” — yeah, now THAT’s what I’m talking about.

Just a small note to say that E-Sword is not open-source, but is freely available. I would like to see it become open-source because I see the potential it can have (not that it is not a great resource already). If you feel the same, write to Rick via the feedback on the E-Sword page and let him know.

Don Elbourne also gracefully offers the following information, along with a correction:

One correction, e-sword is not “open source.” The program is a free
download, but Rick does not make the source available. The only active open
source Bible software project is The Sword Project. http://crosswire.org
For web applications, you may want to check out Diatheke at the bottom of
the page.

THANKS GUYS! – I had originally penned freeware, then for some reason wrote open source. That’ll teach me to be in a hurry !-)

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. – Ephesians 6:17

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-­edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. – Hebrews 4:12

3 Comments

Just a small note to say that E-Sword is not open-source, but is freely available. I would like to see it become open-source because I see the potential it can have (not that it is not a great resource already). If you feel the same, write to Rick via the feedback on the E-Sword page and let him know.

Our parish has been in the process for the last 8 months of creating a digital version of the New American Bible. We have accomplished this and are proceeding to create an interactive Bible Study where the groups participating in the study will create our non interactive archives from their live studies. We will be creating a Soap service to provide the NAB to other churches. We are in need of commentaries and study materials that we would like to access through Soap Services.